* If you dissolve six aspirins in a Coke and drink the Coke, this will drive your blood pressure above acceptable levels.
* Wear lace panties to the physical and they'll never take you!
* Join the National Guard -- but you have to know someone!
* Enroll in seminary -- it doesn't matter if you're an atheist.
* Almost everyone has a relative in Canada -- you can go Up There!
* Go on to grad school and stay there until your 26th birthday.
ETC.
These were suggested strategies during the 1960s to avoid the draft and Vietnam. Now, that was our last "real" war -- the two Gulf incidents were victory parades. Men were dying around 300-400 a week and 55,000 died in all. Those who survived frequently came home with emotional and addiction problems (I remember one friend, a rifleman, who on returning "home" sat on a couch, giggled and rocked back and forth when you tried to converse.) I simply cannot remember a single acquaintance who came back from Nam a happier or better person than before he went. The most common characteristic among these veterans was a cutting, and rather nasty, cynicism.
So, now women -- hitherto sequestered from the horrors of combat -- will have "equal rights" to die, kill and be maimed. I guess that is progress.
It seems entirely possible that the USA will again get into a real war of attrition. At this point, women advocates may learn that combat is not just an extended hiking trip during which, for some unaccountable reason, everyone is carrying a repeating rifle.
Where the women go to pee in privacy is going to be the least of their problems if the shooting starts. A made-for-TV movie ("She Came Back") will be small consolation to the dead and wounded.
What a terrible idea!!

I'm pretty sure our soldiers who are women are already aware that combat isn't a hiking trip, since they're already seeing combat- are still shooting and being shot at, being blown up and every other messy thing war entails...they just aren't being given official combat jobs. There are already women soldiers who are injured, who come home amputees, who suffer from debilitating PTSD, who already have the "equal right" to die.

These personal tragedies are unfortunate. But, the type of wars during my lifetime -- WW2, Korea and Nam -- involved industrial-scale killing. When tens of thousands of females a year are being fitted with prothesis or undergoing multiple operations for facial reconstruction, then you may see exactly what "offensive" really is.

Except, because they don't have official combat jobs, getting treatment for things like PTSD via the VA is not an option. As you note, women are already in combat. They just aren't getting the benefits (including eligibility for promotion to the top ranks) that having an official combat job on the record brings.

Google Lyndde England -- and see whether she was "getting the benefits." I don't think women will make bad soldiers. I think they will perform well. However, I don't want men to be soldiers either, if it can be avoided, because they must kill/be killed and main others/be maimed themselves. The use of violent force -- combat -- is often a necessary evil. Brave men and women can do it. However, it is still an evil. I would not my son to kill others. Nor, a daughter. This is not about equality and career advancement -- it is whether the world really needs more victims and killers.

A world without soldiers would be great. Unfortunately, we aren't there yet. And it is the nature of things that it doesn't take two to force a disagreement to violence. At which point, you have two options:
- continue to renounce violence, and let those who feel otherwise be rewarded with control of events.
- decide that you are willing to use violence to defend yourselves after all.
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It appears to me that saying "I would not let my son (or daughter) kill others" is equivalent to saying that you would rather have your life run by those who feel differently. Or, at least, that you would prefer to free-ride on those who are willing to fight to defend the culture that you enjoy. Because, if nobody will fight for your culture, you are going to end up with a culture of those who will fight (fundamentalist Islam, for example) to force others to follow their rules.

As for Ms England, as (officially) someone who was not in a combat role, she would not be eligible some promotions (a benefit), and as a veteran she would not be eligible for treatment for some combat-realated problems (also a benefit). So yes, she was not "getting the benefits" of having a combat specialty. Whether she would have otherwise gotten those is an entirely separate issue to whether she would have been eligible to even be considered for them.

Yeah they may be seeing combat but they are not seeing Infantry combat. There is a major difference and the fact that you can't conceptualize this proves that you don't know what you are talking about.

In combat, the soldiers are required to do anything within military law to fight and defeat the enemy. You don't worry about when to pee,defecate,bathe or monthly periods. Military also has to start worrying about these factors in a conventional war and the all-male enemy force might have an advantage, if our male members show chivalry to their female counterparts for their natural issues.

Also, while yes women are generally not as strong as men, they also have a stronger pain threshold and better endurance than men. And as for psychologically, the fact that young men are basically testosterone vials isn't all a good thing when it comes to war. I would think that female soldiers would have better discipline, particularly when out of combat when soldiers have a tendency to do retarded stuff that gets them killed or in Leavenworth.
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There's also one huge factor that makes women good soldiers, that isn't terrible politic, but women for all intents and purposes don't rape people. That is the one problem I really see with women in the military: men in the military. I think the military, as women have played a more active role, hasn't done enough to combat sexual violence or relations that consensual, should not be going on. There's some shit that went down in Bagram that should not have happened. Now I think that the service of women in our military has been an incredible service, and the same will be true when they are allowed to serve in frontline combat, but as it stands, if I had a daughter, I would definitely not want her to join the military. I hope that this decision will also be a call to fix some deeper problems.

"women are generally not as strong as men, they also have a stronger pain threshold and better endurance than men"? I have truly never heard that. I guessing that this is something women like to think because of childbirth, and has no basis in fact. I do know that there are both mental and physical differences between men and women. The mental ones are debatable, but important. The main physical ones are increased upper body strength and 40% more aerobic capacity in the lungs. This second difference gives men more stamina and therefore more physical endurance. Why else are professional women tennis players limited to 3 set matches?

I hate to break it to you but the male is designed to be the expendable gender. He has evolved physical traits to enable him to outrun and hold down women (literally). So much for romance in prehistoric times.

Remember when women were not supposed to run marathons? The limited number of sets are simply an anachronism, and not due to the limits of women.

Within the military itself there are ranks of men, SEALs, and other special forces, elite units who are as physically superior to the regular solider as men are to women in general and the military has a long history of sorting men by ability.

I think a larger problem for brass is the embarrassing fact that the male population itself is in such bad shape that new recruits can't pass a basic physical test when joining up.

PS I also worked with somebody who served in Desert Storm. He had a host of physical limitations but they put him to good use firing artillery.

The other difference, which wasn't mentioned, is higher tolerance for acceleration. Women can tolerate high G forces (slightly) better than men. And being able to tolerate high Gs is important for combat roles like fighter pilots.

Yes, that has been tested extensively in huge centrifuges; and female flight candidates (Air Force, NASA, etc.) did indeed exhibit higher tolerance for G forces. Those tests were as objective as they could be: spin 'em till they pass out...

That is interesting and something I did not know before. If I recall correctly, blackouts occur from blood being forced into the body extremities. G-suits inflate around parts of the body to force blood back to the brain.
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Is this difference due to a larger physical frame for men? more blood supply?

All flight candidates wore the same kind of G-suits (allowing for differences in size irrespective of gender) for those tests. I cannot give you - or even myself, for that matter - an answer that would explain females' demonstrated higher tolerance for G-forces satisfactorily in physiological terms. This is a statistical value, of course, and not all females can tolerate G-forces better than all males. But the statistical results are large enough that they ought to be taken into consideration when choosing future pilots.
I am loath to cite data from very unsavory sources, but the Luftwaffe had done extensive studies and experiments on G-forces experienced by their pilots flying the Stuka (Ju 87) planes, and they favored older (mid thirties), shorter and stockier pilots over younger and taller ones. So, I would surmise that, it has more to do with certain physiological characteristics and has nothing to do with gender. Again, the right person for the right job has nothing to do with having a 'Y' chromosome... as long as they can out turn the other pilots - and shoot them out of the sky...

i do not know about the pain threshold. i played football and fight and i have had to endure some serious pain while in a competition. when i trained with women (mma) they would sit to the side with simple sprains. i doubt women have a higher pain threshold.
as for endurance, once again, i do not know what kind of men you associate with. most men that i know have significantly higher levels of endurance than women. endurance is not just running 20 miles non-stop. Toss 50 lbs on your bag and then walk 30 miles; when you're done, without taking a break, dig up 3 fox-holes; then when the supply trucks pull up, unload several hundred pounds of stuff, stack it, then take a 5 minute break to chew an mre and set up a perimiter. that is endurance.
as for discpline, i was a marine. we are known for our discpline. women tend to be more distracted than men. at the end of the day, the key is not to look at the average population, as most average men would never last through a day of boot camp, but to compare actual soldiers.

Not only that but most advancement, and rightly so, depends on combat experience. Washington, Greene, Allen, Hull, Grant, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz, Schwarzkopf, Powell, Petraeus- all the service they were capable of rendering our country wouldn't have mattered a damn if they couldn't pee while standing up.

Most infantry weapon systems, like machine guns and mortars, are going to be built to be carried by a team of men. They will be made just heavy enough, and bulk enough, so that an average man in the service can carry them and operate them. If they begin redesigning weapon systems by decreasing their potency in making them smallerto accommodate a woman's frame, then this policy will have been a mistake. If they can resist the urge, then maybe I will be positive. Political correctness is a powerful influence in our society and the urge to shrink weapons will be strong. We shall see...

Instead of comparing the best woman against the average man (conclusions from which are suspect), I recommend comparing the ability's of young healthy women against those of young healthy men which, statistically is more meaningful. The results, unsurprisingly would show that men are indeed stronger than women. This simple fact is obscured by comparing the best vs the average. No matter what you believe I ask that you not distort the data in this manner for the sake of a logically tenable position.

My point is-- they should take everyone who qualifies and turn them in to a soldier. If they don't qualify and/or wash out, then that's their own personal failing, but it should not be based on gender, instead, it should be based purely on ability.

Defense officials have already gone on record saying that they will have to change but of course not lower training standards to accomodate women. So my question to you is why should men have to die because they are serving with inferior soldiers just so you and a few other women can feel better about the world?

Defense officials have already gone on record saying that they will have to change but of course not lower training standards to accomodate women. So my question to you is why should men have to die because they are serving with inferior soldiers just so you and a few other women can feel better about the world?

I think you're confused about the issue. Women are already facing combat situations, the point of the change is to give them the consequent standing derived from it.

Men on average are stronger than women, but every military unit has to deal with the real fact that each male is of different ability. Reality already has 'inferior' soldiers in all male units and this has been so forever.

Lady the difference between riding around a humvee and running over an IED vs. conducting real infantry missions like movement to contact, long range patrol, assaulting an objective etc. is quite a lot. The physical requirements to effectively execute these missions is quite a bit more taxing than a simple react to contact. The fact that you can't comprehend this shows you have serious flaws in your argument. As far as there already being inferior male soldiers in the field no one would deny that but these inferior males did pass standard training to be there and the point I was making was that defense officials have already said they will change the standard to accomodate women.

"defense officials have already said they will change the standard to accomodate women."
that is the 1000lb gorilla in the room which no one wants to acknowledge. lowered standards equate to lower capabilities; unless of course all nations decide to lower their standards.
a lot of the 'pro-women infantry' people like to claim 'several countries have women serving in combat'.. what they don't actually point out is that very, very few countries have women serving in their infantry. israel, for example (a country they like to cite) has only 3% of their women serving in infantry, and that is in a very limited role.
mark my words, this is what will happen:
a. maintain same standards and require women to meet said standards
b. women will fail to meet such standards
c. either of:
i) implement differing standards for men and women and become more accomodating to women OR
ii) lower overall standards

either of the above (in c) will result in a less capable unit.

most of these people have never seen combat; i have. it is sad that pencil pushers are going to jeopardize the lives of so many. I am only glad i served my country when i did. when logic prevailed.

I agree. What is scary is that someone already pointed out what any of us who have served in the infantry already know. That meeting the army minimum for pt test etc. would never fly in most infantry units. Most division, battallion, or company commanders set their own pt standards and send those who don't measure up to remedial pt. Can you hear the feminazi crowd when one of their prized women actually meet the army minimum but fail a unit commander's standard and she is forced to do remedial pt. You know they will say she passed the minimum standard so leace her alone. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

"Lady the difference between riding around a humvee and running over an IED vs. conducting real infantry missions like movement to contact, long range patrol, assaulting an objective etc. is quite a lot."

Which was only my point. Combat is not all LURP, SEAL or special ops patrols etc.

Like i said, I worked with a vet of Desert Storm. He had quite a gimpy body. Flat feet, chest deformity, etc. The Army still had him in combat. Could some number of women out do him in a bunch of different physically demanding tasks? Yes.

I would gather from your comments about this individual that you don't respect his physical prowess and because of this you came to the conclusion that you must not need to be in good physical condition to be in the infantry so it wouldn't matter if women were allowed in. Well, you would be wrong. What is more troubling to me is that you seem to think that some of the common infantry type operations I listed are only conducted by special operations troops. Once again you are very wrong. I listed them because they are common infantry assignments and because they are often very grueling. It would seem to me that you have come to a conclusion based off of incorrect facts. That seems to be a common theme about the women in combat argument. Glad I'm not in anymore and I feel sorry for those that are because a bunch of people who don't seem to have even basic knowledge of what it takes to be a grunt have decided women should be in the infantry just so they can feel better about themselves.

"I would gather from your comments about this individual that you don't respect his physical prowess and because of this you came to the conclusion that you must not need to be in good physical condition to be in the infantry so it wouldn't matter if women were allowed in. "

I have eminent respect for him. He is a good man. And I could beat him into the ground on most physical tests. The only point here is he was put into combat, while I would have been rejected as being "insufficient" because of gender.

Again, my only point is that brass should put people in place who are up to the task; elite forces are such because those men stand above in physical and mental characteristics. I know one LURP. Started in the 5th cavalry, his unit was demolished and he moved to the 101st. Never got jump qualified, they needed people so they took him, but when he left the service he had 3 purple hearts and 4 bronze stars. Even the Vietnamese gave him a medal.

Now if the military is going to reduce the criteria, I would reject that as political pandering and a bad idea, if the criteria actually determines military success for any particular position, but let's be clear here the military has to deal with the recruits it gets, and frankly they are finding that male volunteers themselves are increasingly failing the physicals. Unfortunately we are nation of couch potatoes turning into donuts.

BTW I am all for instituting a universal draft -- with no exceptions. Pour all individuals through service for 18 months; a volunteer/mercenary army is a bad idea. Citizens of a nation should expect to fight and die for it and not shove the job off on a few.

I fly an F-15 in the United States Air Force, and women have been fighting in combat for some time. Not only that, they do so effectively. One female pilot I worked with once asked, "How many men do I have to kill before I have the status of one?" That said, of the 30 combat pilots in my squadron, only one is female. More disturbingly, there's not a single African American among the pilots in my squadron. In fact, I've only met one in any of the squadrons I've been in.

Five of the ten Americans who started pilot training with me washed out, including the only two female students. One female couldn't get over airsickness and another failed on ability. For right or wrong, as an under-represented group, equally qualified female officers are promoted at a higher rate than their male counterparts in the Air Force.

The author makes a great point. There will always be at least some women who can perform at the required standard to do any military job. The trouble is that the military does a very poor job of defining and enforcing that standard. It takes very little effort to pass a military fitness test. Then in combat, whether pulling 9Gs in a fighter or having to carry your 250 lb wounded buddy through the mud, we find there's a real standard that's much higher than the test. The trouble is the military allows people of both genders into that position who can't pass that higher standard, and guess what? We know from Bayes Rule that the gender that happens to be, on average, weaker physically makes up a disproportionate number of those who fail in these arenas...hence the grumbling and stereotypes among the members of those career fields.

In my personal ideal world of chivalry, there would always be a brother, father, son, or husband to step up and put himself in harm's way so that a woman doesn't have to take on that dangerous role, but that wish is subordinate to the fact that every woman should have the freedom to serve her country if she chooses. There should be gender-blind standards for what any person must be able to do to serve in specific combat roles.

The problem we have right now though is that not enough people are volunteering to serve. That's one of the reasons why some branches have cut standards. Allowing women is a solution to that problem. I also think higher pay, less deployment of reservists, and a smaller military would also be solutions.

Record budgets, low retention, and a force working 12 hour days all point to one thing...the mission has grown out of control. When the media's first response to the Japanese Tsunami is, "What will the US military be doing about this?" we know we have reached a crisis of scope in our mission. Military pay is actually very high right now, though I agree with the proof in the pudding to economic incentives. Talking to the troops, the ops tempo is the singular reason folks are headed for the exits. 10% of our squadron's marriages end every time we deploy (which is every other year). That doesn't make family life over a 20 year career a very good bet.

Yes, and behind it a public that thinks that we are best defended when over committed, and that patriotism is volunteering other people. And thank you for your service, and for defending this country. I'd thank you for the other ones you're defending, but it is a very long list and I can't pronounce many of them.

"That will make the quality of America's combat troops better. The relevant standards need not be lowered. If such outstanding women can't rise to the level of performance required of Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, then they should not be SEALs or Rangers. It's really rather simple, isn't it?"

Two big American problems (or bad habits) which may fall into the realm of "social psychology" or some such field, have grown to the point where Americans simply cannot afford their direct and indirect costs any longer, and these are:
#1. America's very expensive obsession with political correctness.
#2. America's habit of holding up media-driven exceptions, and reasoning as if the exception is not the exception, but the statistical norm and most common case.
Problem #1 needs no explanation or examples as America is one, big, deficit-spending example of political-correctness gone off the deep end, which of course helps employ America's 1.1 million lawyers.
#2 may benefit from an example. As best I can piece together, the escalation, if not the initiation of America's ill-fated "war on drugs" was grounded in an American basketball player who had used cocaine, dying in the middle of a basketball match. This high-visibility event was exploited by politicians, with the help of an highly complicit media, to draw attention to themselves, and their quickly invented and marketing-labeled vehicle, the "war on drugs". The rare exception of that basketball player dying mid-game, was interpreted as it it was the norm, not the exception, and America geared up its war on drugs accordingly. Today, America and the world are paying dearly for this absurd reaction to a high-visibility media promoted tragedy.
Some day, and one hopes it is soon for America's sake, the "mind" of America is going to grow up. Perhaps its unfortunate but continued loss of relative economic status, and ability to pay for so many immature interpretations of events, will help America's mind to grow beyond the adolescent stage, and cause Americans to no longer let themselves be so easily be sold down the river by politicians and the media.

"Major Judith Webb, the first woman to lead an all-male field force in the Army, warned that standards would deteriorate further if the UK followed America in allowing women soldiers to fight on the front line.
She said women should not be given roles in infantry units where they would be expected to “close with and kill the enemy at close quarters”.
But Major Webb, who left the Army in 1986, said she had been “horrified” to learn that changes had already been brought in that watered down recruitment standards for both genders for “military fitness” and “combat effectiveness”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We don’t want to reduce standards of fitness for male soldiers, for infantry soldiers, in order to meet what women can do and that is, I am afraid, what is likely to happen, and is already happening.”
Major Webb said it was part of a drive to “meet gender equality requirements”."

If the Israelis do it - and their conscription is mandatory, except (thus far) for the ultra-orthodox - and they send their women into combat battalions, artillery, and as pilots, then I don't see any argument that's worth taking a look at. Heck, the Israelis have sent their women to the front lines.

I do expect the armed forces to be more highly selective about women in combat roles than they would for men, but I would expect that at least 1/3 of female recruits would be able to keep up with or exceed the standards set for male combat soldiers; statistically, the physical differences are not that large.

Actually that's not true. The Israelis did it for the same reason we do; prior to 1980 or so, no Israeli women served in combat (that includes pilots and artillery). One would think that 1967 was enough of an existential crisis to get women into combat, but actually that didn't happen until nearly two decades afterwards.

I think it was the Israeli who had bad experiences with mixed units. Men breaking down when a woman is shot next to them. As far as I know, the sexes are seperated and female units are not normally in the front line.

I suggest you wikipedia the Caracal Battalion. Frontline battalion, 60% female. Incidentally both the men and women of the battalion face discrimination, the men because other units imply that they are not "manly" enough to have been assigned to an all-male battalion.

What are you counting as a "real" operation, Lebanon? There have been multiple punitive incursions into Gaza since then, almost all of which have been viewed as successful. And besides, Americans should know that counterinsurgency is hard - it's not as if we haven't been "absolutely embarassed" for the last ten years.

My friends who were ROTC cadets in college uniformly agreed that going to war with the IDF - especially their air force - was probably the best of all worlds because of their constant combat experience.

I've been in the Army for more than 30 years, starting out as a private and moving up the ranks to LTC. This argument was going on when I first joined and continues to this day. My personal experience tells me that women in combat is doable but there are going to be costs associated with this move. Most people have no idea what it really take to be in combat, it's not like the movies. We fight as a team and everyone at some point in time has to be able to depend on some other person to carry the load in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Can women with the proper training shoot, drive, or fly as well as any man, well the answer is sure. But there is much more to being in combat than that, and sometimes it just comes down to physical strength. How many artillery shells can you move, how much ammo can you hump, here take this mortar plate and carry it with you, grab the M-60, help shoulder your buddies load, and the list goes on and on. Personal experience in basic training, Officer Advanced Camp (ROTC), and the Officer Basic Course taught me that women have a problem with certain physical activities and that it is up to everyone else to carry the load for them when they fail to measure up. Could this apply to a man? Maybe, but I never got stuck carrying anyone else's load except for the women in my squad. Is she going to drag me out of the line of fire when I'm wearing my 50 lbs of body armor on top of my 180 lbs? When we put someone on an emergency litter is she going to be able pick them up and carry them to the pickup point? What about being in the field for months at a time or at some remote FOB or OP? Is she going to be combat ineffective once a month? We aren't talking make believe Hollywood BS with Demi Moore running around with Navy Seals. This is about real life and death situations that can occur and are routinely part of the Combat Arms Branches of the Army. Aircraft or Helicopter Pilots? sure. Tank or SP Artillery drivers? maybe. I can see that, but guess what? Many of the specialties, other than Pilots, we are talking about have limited promotion potential. What about the Infantry? Mechanized or Leg? I don't see it happening. One thing is clear today, women are in Combat right now and the role they play is huge. However, there is a significant difference between combat specific specialties and other specialty areas, and those who support putting women into these roles are simply ignoring reality.

There are also immense costs associated with morale as well. The amount of women who sleep around on deployment would shock most people in the United States. I do not have any concrete studies but I would say anecdotally from my experience that at least 50% of deployed females have relations with the opposite sex, and a high number are also "curious" about other girls.

"You can have a military without women and the problem is solved."
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No, it's not. There have been a long history of scumbags who do not deserve the title "soldier" sexually harassing and assaulting their fellow soldiers, be they male or female.
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Do not defend these people. They are not WORTH defending, and having them in our military brings shame to the service that every other soldier bears.

@guest-ieeinnj So, an argument based on a nasty stereotype, with no data to back it up, that implicitly puts all the blame for sexual relations in the military on women, all the while the real moral tragedy of the US military is the alarmingly high rate of sexual assault on women by men. Can you sink any lower?

I have been holding myself from commenting on this topic but this article symbolizes all the hypocrisy around it. The point is not about gender equality or denying that there are very strong and capable woman. To claim that some of the strongest women are stronger than most men is to believe wars are fought Rambo style. The real issue here is to question how men and women can co-exist in a battlefront and how much the presence of women can destabilize a community that for thousands of years has been dominated by men. To all the gender equality fanatics, the battlefront is not made of the same people you find behind the desks of top corporations whose most powerful weapons are a pen and their tongue. Soldiers have different roles, the army has been made of men programmed to do the most brutal of jobs in the most brutal places. One can easily imagine the consequence of the love affairs, jealousy, competition between comrades, shots in the back, and so on. This is just a typical example of political prostitution to get votes and one can also imagine lawyers profiting from an avalanche of lawsuits among men and women crying over career progression, sex crimes, and so on. Imagine pregnant soldiers! In the past to be at home raising children used to be a noble thing to do, now you expect women in a battlefront carrying a weapon in one hand and their belly with another because this is “gender equality”!? Are you out of your minds? As a reader already commented here, is this the society you want?

I think the idea that women will destabilize the military and engage in combat operations with a developed fetus is sensationalist and inflammatory in intent. I served in Afghanistan in a military which includes women in combat arms elements(I wont say which due to the knee jerk reaction I've received from American's regarding the "other" armies and its effect on considering actual arguments). The authors inclusion of the stipulation that they meet the same standards of behavior and physical capabilities of their male counterparts is right on. If they can carry / drag my kitted up body at 300lbs then I'm happy to have them with me. To suggest that their presence in the ranks will incur jealousy, backstabbing, and career law suits is ridiculous. That behavior happens regardless with or without women in uniform, soldiers encounter girls and love interests and compete for them. Have you ever been to a base town? let alone an American base town? its competitive... scarily competitive.

With regards to sex crimes, as a human and American you should be concerned about that, also its linkage to the ongoing gang problems within your military. If you want to know what destabilizes the combat effectiveness of your soldiers its that the bloods and the crips are fighting each other when their corporeal hosts should be working together against the Taliban. Despite all your army's strengths and abilities this one fact made your soldiers the laughing stock, and the unruly neighbor of ISAF forces.

Being afraid to identify yourself doesn't really give you much credence in my book. Unless you are a Brit or a Canadian I can honestly say that we, that is the US Army, don't really rely on you for anything we deem important.

Taking into account your reply to nfinityman's comment I find it paradoxal that you think my arguments are "sensationalist and inflammatory". You have just described my concerns with real life examples. I really mean no disrespect for anyone but I deeply believe the battlefront is not place for female soldiers to be mixed with male soldiers. Taking into account your experience, do you truly believe that what you have seen is a good place for a woman to be, let alone for the standards of behaviour of a professional army? Do you think that women POW would be treated the same way than male POWs? Do you really think that to reach a better society men and women must compete with eachother for everything? Do I need to have been in Afghanistan to have opinion about this?

There are some very, very real hurdles to be got over in order to get this right, but the US armed forces are usually extremely good at adapting. I hate to sound like a bean counter, but the US has decided that its armed forces will be limited to a certain size. I do not know how many job descriptions exist in the Service, but if you limit a large number of them to men (or women) you may run short of "qualified" people. By having the largest number of people eligible to apply for jobs, you can take the most qualified ones. Please note my emphasis on qualified people. No serious person is saying we should lower standards to achieve "equality".

Funny you should mention not lowering standards. That's exactly what they did early on with regard to the military fitness requirements. That is a concrete example of what is now routinely accepted. Just so you know, them pushup, situp, and 2 mile run requirements for women are such that a man performing at those levels would receive a failing score. Simple as that. Women are not being held to the same standard as men.

So are you saying that the women should be held to the same standards, because those standards are actually relevant to doing the job? Or are you saying that, in most cases, the standards are fossils which ought to be revised to reflect what is actually required for the 21st century military?

I take your point. I beleive that when mental / physical standards have been relaxed in the past, the goal was to increase the intake - more people could be consider as "qualified". As I recall, part of the (unstated) rationale for lower standards was that women were not going to be in combat, so fitness was less important.

Please explain how physical fitness is a fossil that doesn't reflect warfare in the 21st century, I'm very curious. Perhaps we should just let obese people join the infantry too. They can fire a rifle just like everyone else.

There is a difference between suggesting that standards which assume that being able to do most things strictly with muscle power are irrelevant to today's military. And saying (as you suggest) that physical fitness is irrelevant. Do you need to be able to do a minimum of 50 push-ups to do the things that need to be done? If so, some specifics of what those things are that need that kind of upper body strength would seem to be in order. For example, would chin-ups (which use the muscles needed for pulling someone else out of a problem which some other commenters have raised as an issue) be more relevant that push-ups?
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In fact, I would say that, for all of the military fitness standards, some justification for why that, rther than anything else, should be the standard is in order. Do members of the military need to be fit? Absolutely. But how just how fit, and on which measures?

I'm not exactly sure what you're arguing here. Service members may have some mechanical help at times but it's not as if they would in combat and I don't see the feasibility of some sort of physical test that tests things other than physical prowess.
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However, as you point out the number 50 like all standards is a bit arbitrary. Then again it's impossible to determine the exact correlation between the number of push-ups one is able to do and the level of physical fitness needed, but the people who set the standards do their best to get it right.
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The reason push-ups are favored over pull-ups is because its an activity women can participate in without extensive training. I'm personally a fan of pull-ups as better measure of strength but they would be much more difficult for women on average. One thing I think we can agree upon though, is that the demands of military service are not different for different sexes. The enemy or the task does not care if you are a man or a woman. Then why are women's standards so much lower than men's? The current numbers for passing the upper body strength portion of each service's test: Army men 42 push-ups, women 19; Navy men 37, women 19; Air Force men 33, women 18; Marine Corps men 3 pull-ups, women 15 second arm hang. Even in 2014 when the Marine Corps will be the first service to have the same minimum score for both men and women (the women are going to do pull-ups), the female max score is less than half of the men's. True equality regardless of gender is the same exact test with the same minimums and the same maximums.
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I agree that there should be justifications for why each exercise was chosen. One thing to keep in mind is that most of the physical fitness tests are just that, designed to get an assessment of base level physical fitness not task related strength. Tests like the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test are more in that strain, although the standards are lower there for women too. What do you think a better alternative would look like?

I was trying to say that, once we have established some basic level of fitness, the specifics ought to be derived from saying: What are you going to need to be able to do? And basic overall fitness is probably as well established by the run as by anything else.
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So, if you need to push stuff away (say to load the top level of a truck?), then pushups make sense. If you need to be able to pull something (a comrade out of harms way?) then pull-ups or something similar (rope pull against resistance, perhaps?) makes sense. But start from the need, not from some exercise which is traditional but not relevant. And yes, I completely agree that the requirement ought to be strictly based on what is needed to do the job, not on the gender of the participant. Doing otherwise is just saying that the "standard" is arbitrary, not job-based.
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I confess that I have a particular irritation at push-ups, because I remember seeing research (back in the 1960s, if memory serves) that showed that they were actively detrimental to the back. Interestingly, "girls' pushups" (i.e. those from the knees, rather than the toes) were found to be significantly less damaging. Why manadate including a test which damages the person being tested? The mind boggles.

So someone who can run a 18 minute three mile but can perform only three pull-ups is as fit as someone who does 20 pull-ups and a 20 minute mile? The answer is no. If you can run really fast to your injured friend but you can't move him because you lack the strength then you might as well not even been there. There are good reasons for having strength and endurance portions of the test, endurance alone does not capture fitness.
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The idea of many different tests seems great but would fail in practice. To determine if they are capable of doing the task assigned to them is the job of their MOS school. After that, a standardized test is useful because it allows comparisons across entire rank groups and implementing dozens of different tests would be extremely difficult and in no way efficient.
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Push-ups are bad for your back, okay. You know what else is bad for you? Humping with 100 pounds of combat gear, running in boots, staying awake for days at a time, exposure to under-researched chemicals, shrapnel, brain injuries and combat. I think push-up are the least of a service member's worries.

it has started already. the marine corps, army, navy, airforce have had these standards in place for time immemorial. nobody back then questioned the 'job applicability' of these standards.
now that some people are identifying the possibility of women not being able to meet these standards and hence be disqualified for roles because of such; these 'philosophical' discussions about the 'validity' of such standards come to bear.
why is it so important for women to get shot at? when will this stop, when women can also piss standing up?

It isn't that it is important that women can get shot at. Especially since that is already happening, and has been for a decade or more. It is a matter of whether they get training for dealing with those situations, and whether they get credit for the fact that it is happening.
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P.S. Women already can pee standing up. Simple paper devices are available; fancier ones can even be found on Amazon.com. So that shouldn't be the next hurdle.

I am sure that women are capable of serving as the equals to men in the military. Victory in modern warfare has far more to do with organization and technology than it does about what side has the strongest warriors. There is no reason that a woman can't shoot a gun or follow orders just as effectively as a man.

But my question is, why do we as a society want this? I of course support legal equality of men and women, but do we really want to live in a society where gender roles are entirely discarded and where men and women are interchangable? The woman in the picture is virtually indistinguishable from a man. How does it empower women to celebrate their masculinization?

I know many people will perceive this as being about equal opportunity, but how is the opportunity to be a frontline foot soldier in foreign wars something positive? In 2011, 22,800 rapes occurred in the Armed Forces. As we should expect, 90% of the victims were female. The US military, probably justifiably, deems rape an "occupational hazard" of service. Off you go.

This is about equal opportunity mostly to the extent that promotion to the upper ranks requires experience in combat personnel classifications. Not, note, being in combat -- you don't actually have to have done that. What is formally required is having the right MOS on your record.

The other "equal opportunity" factor is that having those combat-related MOSs on your record are required to get certain VA beenfits. In particular, treatment for PTSD. The fact that you have been in combat isn't the requirement; it's that you have to have had the right MOS.

In short, the "opportunity" to actually be in combat has been there for a decade or more. But what has just changed is administrative recognition of that fact.

In ordinary society we are rightfully taught from a young age not to use violence, rape people, or kill people. In most civilized countries this indoctrination is mostly successful. But the military needs to destroy those inhibitions and teach people to kill and be violent. Is it in any way surprising that trained killers in mortal danger sometimes commit rape? Do you really think there is a way to stop that? Rape has always been part of war. The solution is to prevent war whenever possible and keep women out of its path.

"I suggest you hop in your time machine and hie thee away to the 19th century where you clearly come from."

I am far left and quite comfortable with the 21st century. My issues are exclusively with the American brand of second wave feminism and the American glorification of war. This issue combines the two.

The American military claims that the recruiting pool (young American males) is now too unfit to adequately fill the ranks. In that sense, doubling the size of the pool cannot hurt (just keep standards where they are). The only other option would seem to be Romanesque -- offer citizenship to foreigners willing to serve.

That said, Mr. West's "third and fourth order effects" are not to be denied. Military service, even in combat zones, is predominantly filled with boredom. Camaraderie is already strong amongst combat soldiers, many of whom have trouble readjusting to the often less intimate relationships offered by their traditional families back home. So when your lieutenant puts you in a foxhole for a dozen 4-hour midnight watches with a woman, nature will eventually take its course. Uneven sex ratios and chains of command will only exacerbate jealousy and the other sins of attraction. And servicewomen will be raped by friends and enemies.

Nevertheless, I believe the Israelis have already been doing this for some time, and no one doubts their effectiveness. So this will work. I just think it is negligent to brush it off as a simple issue of equality. The spouses left at home have enough to worry about already, and will surely see my point.

" I just think it is negligent to brush it off as a simple issue of equality. "

As you say the Israelis do it, as do several other nations and now the US, if only because women are already in combat positions and facts on the ground have removed the arm chair posturing on the matter. This last fact has just made it not some pie in the sky principal but a more simple matter of acknowledging reality and allowing individuals who can and have served recognition for that fact.

This is still not an argument! The Israeli society is not the American society, they have different values and even there the female presence in the battlefront is questionable. Have you ever heard of Israeli female POWs? I guess not.
Many Arab countries also have women soldiers, but they are a completly different society and with different values. In our western society to mix male and female soldiers together in a battlefront scenario is just irresponsible. Go to facebook or try to meet western male and female soldiers and perhaps you will understand the sort of worries one should care about...

The most convincing argument I've encountered again women in combat positions came from a female friend of mine who served in the American Navy. She claimed that every time the military attempted to integrate women into field units it has failed. It did not fail, she said, because the women could not do the job, or because the men were lecherous horn dogs -- neither of those were the case. However, the male soldiers seemed unable to suppress the instinct to protect the women -- they would, under stress, place the women's safety above that of other men, or even of the whole unit. She did not know if this behavior was evolved and hardwired or cultural in origin, and she did not care. If we want to change this male attitude towards women, there are many arenas where it could be attempted. Combat, where lives hang in immediate balance, should not be one of them.

Upon further reflection, I would offer these observations about fairness vis-a-vis the military. It seems unfair that in America it has mostly been only men who get to
1. experience combat roles;
2. be forcibly drafted into the military against the threat of imprisonment;
3. experience the searing pain of having their flesh ripped off by mil-spec tumbling bullets;
4. get captured, tortured and beheaded and have their bodies mutilated;
5. wind up as multiple amputees or para- and quadriplegics, rotting away in military; hospitals, or on the streets with a tin cup and a cardboard placard;
6. the permanent emotional scarring of PTSD, and not uncommon concomitant substance abuse;
7. the pomp and circumstance of having their dead bodies returned by the military to their families and a free American flag for their families, courtesy of the government;
8. cause pain, agony and distress to parents who see their beloved child drafted into military service and/or deployed to combat; and
9. get tears shed for them by their children, spouses, parents and loved ones when they are horribly injured or killed.

It just seems so unfair that mostly only men get to experience the above opportunities in America. With this change, it would appear that finally men will be stopped from monopolizing this important area of life opportunity all for themselves, and will be forced to share it, presumably equally, with women who apparently America deems to be every bit as deserving of such fine opportunities for their lives as men are.

Personal attacks, such as yours upon myself, are always taken by me, and I'm sure most intelligent people here, of a sign that the attacker is conceding defeat and has no substantive arguments or points to offer. "Rubbishing" my post, which was surely not rubbishing the profound sacrifices and enormous service of American soldiers -- male and female -- is a variation on that way of conceding defeat.
Next time, why not try the more honorable and honest approach of simply conceding defeat rather than throwing a nasty, and non-fact-based tantrum?

Women would do a much better job if they convinced males to stop slaughtering each other on a regular basis instead of joining them in this idiocy. If they could manage on a worldwide basis to deny them sex to achieve this goal, we would quickly find out how far gender equality has really progressed.

This continual bogus belief that somehow women are less inclined to violence is really not supported by much hard evidence, It is really nothing more than a myth propagated by people with an agenda of their own.

When women in Bosnia were being pushed into rape camps, serbian women egged on their serbian males to carry out the rapes.

Women can be as violent as men. Terrorists have known for decades that a woman's maternal instincts can be suborned to make them extremely ferocious in pursuing their agendas. Remember Ulrika Meinhof, Leila Khaled amongst others who have maimed and killed without compunction.